Talk:Soul Reaver 2/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 17:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC) Review forthcoming... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, overall a fairly good article close to GA quality, but there are a couple of stumbling blocks along the way...

Prose

• In places the article presumes too much familiarity—I was getting lost. Examples: the lead says Traveling through Nosgoth's history..., and Nosgoth hasn't been mentioned yet. Soul Reaver 2 is a single-player, third-person action-adventure game where the player controls Raziel, a ghostly "ex-vampire". might be a bit too confusing for non-game readers without explaining the "third-person" bit which is strung into the others.
• Use of two words where one will do and excessive passive voice makes the article difficult to read; reword where plausible. For example: The game was released to limited success, being praised for its involved storyline, visuals and puzzles, but criticized for lacking replay value and ending without a definite resolution to the plot. → "Critics praised the game for its involved storyline", etc.
• Likewise, the side characters mentioned in the "character" section really should be introduced or cut if they aren't very important. Wikilinks aren't a substitute.
• On the more minor copyediting tweaks and such, I'll try and do a line edit later.

References

• "Soul Reaver 2 was met with generally favorable reviews, though did not reach the same levels of acclaim as its predecessor." → doesn't seem to be appropriate to use the GameRanking/Metacritic aggregate scores to suggest this. You can say Soul Reaver got X score while Soul Reaver 2 got Y, but you can't synthesize a finding from them.
• For the reception section, you should really credit the reviewer where possible—like you have "IGN's Doug Perry".
• Spotchecks not done.

Images

• Not sure how File:SR2-Development.jpg meets NFCC; it doesn't appear to be part of significant commentary on how those illustrated elements changed, etc., unless I'm missing something.
• File:SR2-Gameplay.jpg and File:PS2SoulReaver2.JPG need better FUR rationales, especially for the "purpose" section. A random example of a more-fully-filled and defensible rationale is File:St6-excelsior and shock wave.png.

Misc.

• Article seems broad in coverage, especially for GA-level.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

First, thanks very much to you for starting the review. I've only just noticed it now, so sorry about the delay, but from here on I'll try to address everything in as timely a manner as possible.

• I take very seriously the concern when it comes to the gulf between myself and general readership - since I'm a fan of this game it is a bit tough for me to recognise overfamiliar prose and failure to introduce in-universe material as a typical reader would, so please do highlight as many issues here as possible and I'll do my best to correct them. For now I've made a new edit to amend the flaws you noted and I'm certain there's several more.

• Will hopefully fix the purple prose and passive voice problems tomorrow when I have a chance to do a full re-read - I often tend to have a few problems when it comes to sentence variation until it's pointed out to me.

• I've gotten rid of the minor characters and added a little more establishing material for the main cast - hopefully not going into too much excessive detail.

• Tried to amend the synthesis concern; let me know if it's OK now.

• I've revised Reception to refer to every reviewer I can by name, and otherwise to say "X's reviewer said Y" instead of "X said Y". Unfortunately, I don't actually have firsthand access to all of these sources, relying on Metacritic a lot, so it remains a bit vague. I'm conscious that this section is not a work of art, though I doubt I can personally improve the coverage too far beyond what's already there, especially regarding print. I will however keep looking for more reliable material.

• Image rationales are poor; I'll expand them tomorrow. I'm hoping to get a non-watermarked approximation of the first screenshot shortly. File:SR2-Development.jpg was intended to illustrate the spectral realm, as well as the variations between PS2 and the Dreamcast port, but admittedly it doesn't do much but look pretty, and I acknowledge that it shouldn't really serve a purpose extraneous to its subsection. So I've just culled it completely.

Also, if you can take a quick look at the print resources (hit Edit, Ctrl+F and type "journal") and let me know if they are adequate or inadequate for GA, that would be much appreciated so that I know whether to start tracking down more specifics. Several lack page numbers, for instance. I certainly can't guarantee that I can improve all of them, but I'll try. Thanks again! --LoK Wiki (talk) 02:00, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

In regards to print sources, what's essential to verify is the name of the article, publication, and volume/issue or specific Date/Year. The name of the article is pretty much necessary if you don't have the page numbers. I'll take a look at the rest of the article tonight. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:08, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

• Have you had a chance to take a stab at all the above issues? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:05, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I've attempted to improve them all, including the print refs (they should now be up to scratch). I can't say I'm fully confident that the prose familiarity problem is amended, but I've done my best over a few revisions, and if you can specify any other sentences where things get hazy I'll be on hand all of today to fix them. I would say everything else has been dealt with to a good extent. Awaiting your feedback! --LoK Wiki (talk) 17:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

• Some more things:
  • Though Soul Reaver features a variety of boss encounters, Soul Reaver 2 does not; this was a conscious decision on Crystal Dynamics' part, to ensure the game's pacing more closely emulated that of a novel or a film. - this feels like it should be in development; what do you think?
  • As the game progresses, the player encounters magical forges which imbue the Reaver with powers based on the classical elements (darkness, light, air, and fire) Last I checked (at least the Greek) classical elements were fire, water, earth, and air--not the darkness and light mentioned.
  • I think the biggest issue for comprehension of the gameplay section is the use of specific proper and specific nouns where generic ones could do--for example, If Raziel shifts, he loses his active elemental imbuement, and must re-forge the blade at minor elemental fonts scattered throughout the game world. could exchange the "minor elemental fonts" for simple "locations". Dumbing down the prose in this way still gets the point across but avoids ladening the reader with stuff that isn't ultimately very important to understanding the generalities of the game.
  • After killing eight of the corrupt guardians who represented the Pillars, Kain discovered he was the final one, and refused to sacrifice himself, dooming the world to eternal decay, but ensuring the vampire race could live on. So before this point Kain is supposed to be restoring the pillars. Presumably after he is tricked into killing off his vampire brethren, his objective changes to destroying the Pillars? Or did he need to kill the guardians of the Pillars to restore them in the first place? It's unclear.
  • In Soul Reaver, Raziel discovered that he was a human and a leading member of the vampire-hunting Sarafan brotherhood before Kain resurrected him-- woah, there was no mention of Kain resurrecting Raziel before this point.
  • The Sarafan leave as the retreat collapses, and Raziel swears vengeance as Janos dies urging him to reclaim the Reaver the Sarafan have taken. -- wait, so he's declaring vengeance against himself?
  • I removed the "marketing" subhead from the release section, as the info contained within didn't actually seem to have to do with anything pre-release.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:02, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks a lot. I've just made an edit trying to address all of these issues - let me know what you think.

Notes:

• I removed the classical elements hyperlink, but I left in the references to "elements", "elemental", and so on. All of the Reaver enhancements (including light and darkness) are explicitly identified as "elemental powers" in the game, and so are the forges.

• Kain backstory: yes, in the fiction, killing the corrupt guardians restores their Pillars, which is why Kain is obliged to sacrifice himself. His motive for restoring them is a promise that his vampirism will be cured (it turns out that this "cure" was just his own death). His motive for changing his mind later on is the realisation that if he kills himself to restore the last Pillar, he's also killing the last vampire and annihilates a species. There is a fair bit more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. You may be thinking "fancruft" while reading all this, which is why it was not too detailed. I cleared up this point a little in the text, but I think it should stay succinct and simple - to be too much more specific would mean bringing in more irrelevant material from Blood Omen and the rest of the series (like exactly why the Pillars are corrupt, exactly why they collapsed, and so on).

• Raziel killing himself: yes, Raziel travels back in time, watches himself kill Janos, swears vengeance against that incarnation of himself (his former human, Sarafan self) and goes and kills him. I'm not sure if you're flagging that as a problem with the text or if it's just a peculiar-sounding plot point you wanted to clear up, but yes, it's 100% accurate. He doesn't remember his own past, and rediscovers it in this game, so the two Raziels are presented as different characters to an extent. That's why one wants to kill the other.

--LoK Wiki (talk) 19:13, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I can definitely appreciate trying to streamline the narrative. The issue is even with those tweaks, I'm really not following the plot. Maybe it's a matter of more contextual information in the plot section, or a longer bit to the setting and characters to better explain their backstories and some of the previous game's events that directly impact this one. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:14, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Undeniably, the storyline of this series has a reputation for getting complex and convoluted. This game is easily the worst offender. I'll see what I can do, but if you can find time to outline some more of the specific flaws, improvements would be more feasible.

Perhaps the Setting section should actually be simplified - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (a featured article) covers most of the same material in three lines. But, unlike with Soul Reaver, backstory figures significantly into the plot of this game, so culling it might create accuracy concerns. --LoK Wiki (talk) 23:33, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I think shorting out as many non-essential characters and points as possible would be useful. For example, the passage: "Soul Reaver 2 is set within Nosgoth, a fictional land with fantasy elements. In Blood Omen, the vampire Kain embarked on a journey to restore the Pillars of Nosgoth, nine edifices which are inextricably tied to the health of the land.[8][9] During his adventure, Moebius the Time Streamer, a manipulative sorcerer, tricked him into killing a tyrant king, the Nemesis. Though he succeeded by traveling back in time and assassinating a younger version of the Nemesis, the subsequent temporal paradox changed history, resulting in a new timeline in which vampires had been hunted to extinction.[10] After killing eight of the corrupt guardians who represented the Pillars—therefore healing their respective edifices—Kain discovered he was the final guardian. Realizing that his death would ensure the annihilation of the vampires, he refused to sacrifice himself to restore the last Pillar." → I think you could cut it down to that he was tricked by Moebius, a manipulative sorcerer, and attach it to the "after restoring eight of the pillars" with a semicolon. We don't need to know about the temporal paradox or having to kill the guardians to restore the pillars, or the alternate history, because the lines after tell us I think the essentials--he has to kill himself to restore the last pillar, doing that would ensure the death of his race, etc. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:01, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Working on a new edit with this feedback in mind; is it considered particularly important that plot summaries are written in a strict linear order, or is there leeway to present subplots a bit non-sequentially? --LoK Wiki (talk) 20:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Whatever works best for the average reader; I know Star Trek presents the entire time travel subplot as background info rather than where it is revealed in the game, for instance. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 21:02, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I recognise that it is taking me an unreasonable amount of time to finish this revamp of the Story section, and although it's close to being done, I can say with surety that it won't be complete until after Christmas. I really hope it is acceptable that this review leeway period continue into the end of the week when I'll be able to amend the final problems, but if not, please feel free to fail this nom and I'll bring it up to scratch at a later date. --LoK Wiki (talk) 01:46, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

• Don't worry about it, I've got limited time too. I leave my GANs open for as long as necessary (within reason) if good effort's being made to address issues. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 02:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

• Hey, any progress being made? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep, so sorry again for the delay. It is almost done, just still rather hectic recently... If still allowable the story revision will definitely be up this week. --LoK Wiki (talk) 13:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Cheers, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

There's some overlinking, such as with "British comic book". --Niemti (talk) 01:05, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - corrected that. If you see other examples, let me know and I'll delink them. Unless something catastrophic happens, the new story edit should be up on Saturday. --LoK Wiki (talk) 00:52, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking forward to reading it. I've been looking up the story of the series here on Wikipedia and through game guides, etc., to see if I might be struck with further inspiration on how to make it more accessible as well :P Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

That's great that you're researching the story - thanks for taking the time to do that! The GameFAQs plot guide is really good despite a little bit of outdated information, but there's no substitute for the story scripts at Nosgoth.net or YouTube cutscene collections if you have the time to go through it all.

I had unexpected free time tonight so a new version of Plot is up. I've also prepared a couple of other drafts with more radically-different structures/emphases, but let's see if this one is more palatable. Subplots, unnecessaries and red herrings trimmed to hone in on Kain's motives, the Pillars backstory, free will, Raziel's character arc, and how these four are intertwined with payoff. More establishing material for the paradoxes in Setting.

I guarantee I could go even further, as it is a dense old plot to say the least, but it is hopefully more sensible to general readers without culling the main elements. --LoK Wiki (talk) 03:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll talk a look tonight and see how it's progressing. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 23:03, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, I entirely forgot about this. On the plus side I mostly forgot the story too, so I was able to approach it fresh :) It's still incredibly dense, but I think you've done the best job possible to introduce everything and keep it simple. I checked a few refs and they jive with the text, so I think the article is pretty much GA quality. I'm going to do one final pass today and pass it tonight if there are no further issues. One thing to watch out for is keeping plot events in the present; since you're describing events from Soul Reaver it makes sense to keep it present tense for that section and the Soul Reaver 2 plot. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 16:38, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I'll be on hand tonight to fix up any final problems, should they arise. --LoK Wiki (talk) 21:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)